Almond Milk

A few posts back I mentioned the container farm. When we visited it the first time I didn’t have a camera but vowed to get a few pics on the next trip. What you see is about 1/3 of the total field. Your not seeing any of the strawberries which represent about half the total but the concept is the same. In the closeup you can see the drip irrigation system. It drips into only the top container and must just drain on through to the bottom. They use liquid fertilizer which is applied through the drip system.

Tried something new. I read an article a while back describing how many people had switched from regular milk to almond milk. Somehow that didn’t sound all that appealing to me but the article raised my curiosity because they were quite expansive about how much people liked the taste, how good it was for you, and the clincher, it was perfect for people with lactose intolerance. Nancy has always loved milk but for the past couple of years, it hasn’t liked her. Add to that her most recent blood test exposed a need for more vitamin D and calcium. I guess that’s fairly common with women. (Note – I personally believe all the recent hype about vitamin D is the latest medical fad). With that disclaimer, if you read the label on the almond milk, it seems to have all that covered with half the calories of skim milk and none of the bad fats or sugars and a reasonable load of fiber as well. So for $3, why not try it. Poured it on the cereal this morning, deep down inside expecting to pitch it after the first mouthful. When pouring, it seemed much thicker than the skim milk we usually use so I’m expecting a thick, greasy feel to it. Nope. I have an insensitive pallet so the taste to me was just fine and I probably couldn’t tell the difference between it and cow milk. It was slightly heavier than skim milk but quite a bit lighter than whole milk. The big test was Nancy and she was fine with it. So other than being a bit more expensive, double the cost of regular milk, it seems like a no brainer to make the switch. I did read the label more closely later and found that I missed the direction that said to shake well before using. Maybe that’s why it seemed thick. I’ll shake it twice tomorrow to make up for today’s miss. I also saw on the label that it was good for 7-10 days after opening. We go through about a gallon of skim a week so we’re not in any danger of having a half gallon go bad. Not sure how we’ll know if this solves Nancy’s vitamin D and calcium issue but it would have to help, wouldn’t it?

Potato report – The patch that was first to sprout and first to freeze seems to be coming back with about half the plants now sprouting foliage. The second patch, which had not sprouted at all prior to the freeze, is well up now and way ahead of the original planting in terms of visible foliage. No signs of any sprouting at all in the first Yukon Gold patch but I went ahead and planted a second patch anyway. The first patch has now been in just over two weeks so I don’t really expect to see much for another week or two. I also spotted another potato sprouting in amongst the celery which I hadn’t intentionally planted. At first I thought it was a weed but on closer examination, decided it looked exactly like the potatoes sprouting about 30′ away. My guess is that a piece of potato was dumped into the compost pile at some time in the past and was inadvertently moved to that area along with a pitchfork full of compost. I dug it up carefully and moved it to the potato ghetto or barrio.